Friday, August 5, 2016

I Love SNAPDRAGONS!

I just finished a new stitch guide this week, called"SNAPDRAGONS", to accompany Sandra Gilmore's painted canvas of the same name. The minute I saw this smaller canvas (8"x 10" on 18 ct. canvas) I was smitten. I love snapdragons and this lush bouquet had me grinning with pleasure. Then there are all the different vases and dishes -- a china lovers delight!

This was a pretty straight-forward canvas to figure out and stitch: the china is all tent stitched (or basketweave stitched where possible); the blue vase is also tent stitched in sparkly metallic ribbon threads; the cream vase uses shiny ribbon thread as well, but the ribs are slightly padded to create a more realistic raised texture. For a satin sheen, I used more rayon ribbon thread for the chair fabric, as well as on the gold chair back. I found a simple blackwork pattern to use on the wallpaper stripes, as well as a simple diagonal blackwork pattern for the table/tablecloth. Here's look at the canvas up-close:

The last things I stitched were the bouquets of flowers. The white roses gave me a chance to try a technique I used on the climbing roses on NANTUCKET: I used white Ribbon Floss and instead of laying each stitch flat, I deliberately twisted the thread and laid it with a soft twisting curl on the canvas, then couched the curve in place with a soft stitch of the same ribbon thread. Working a bunch of those stitches created the effect of tightly furled roses, and overall I'm very pleased with the effect.

To tackle the masses of pink snapdragons, I tent stitched practically the whole bouquet, from the darkest colors to the lightest; then went back around and added irregular diagonal satin stitched petals wherever I could figure out where to put them - concentrating mostly on the lightest pink colors, to give the illusion of depth in this shallow tablescape.

If you're smitten with this wonderful painted canvas by Sandra Gilmore, you might want to order it from your favorite needlepoint store, who can order the canvas and guide from FLEUR DE PARIS (Sandra's distributor). I have just the stitch guide available on my website, if you already have the canvas and are inspired to start stitching!